NYS' new AI oversight office gets first full-time hire, Gov. Hochul announces

Gov. Kathy Hochul on Monday announced the first full-time hire for the state's newly created artificial intelligence oversight office.

Marc Gilman, former head of compliance for Theta Lake, a Santa Barbara, California, AI security company, will oversee rollout of the state’s RAISE Act, a 2025 law, similar to one passed in California intended to set guardrails for the rapidly advancing technology. He will be the deputy director, she said.

A biography page on Theta's website describes Gilman as a technology lawyer and adjunct professor of compliance at Fordham Law with expertise in tech-related legal and regulatory issues. 

The oversight office, known as DIGIT, or Digital Innovation, Governance, Integrity and Trust, will produce annual reports on frontier model safety and recommend changes to the RAISE Act. The state will start requiring developers to register in November; RAISE Act enforcement will start in January.

New York’s law will require large frontier AI developers to establish and publish safety frameworks and report critical safety incidents to Gilman’s office within 72 hours. They will also be required to register with the office and file quarterly assessments for "catastrophic" risks. The law carries civil penalties for violation.

The state could also investigate safeguards like an AI "kill switch," Hochul said. Kill switches are also part of recent proposals from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and joint legislation proposed this summer by Rep. Ted W. Lieu (D-Los Angeles County) and Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas). Their bill would "require covered developers to maintain the technical ability to throttle, suspend, or fully shut down a covered AI system," according to a July 23 news release from Lieu's office. 

Hochul, speaking at a Manhattan news conference, described the state law as necessary "to ensure technological progress does not come at our own peril." She was joined by Gilman, state legislators Assemb. Member Alex Bores (D-Manhattan) and Sen. Andrew Gounardes (D-Brooklyn), RAISE act sponsors, and attorney general Letitia James.

Monday’s announcement came after several cases of developers’ "rogue" AI agents breaking out of supposedly sealed test environments to hack other companies, incidents that fed worries over increasingly autonomous models. One company, Anthropic, also said it had found -- and blocked -- efforts by human bad actors to use its models for cyberattacks and research that could have led to biological weapons.

Earlier this month, executives of several major AI companies called for an industrywide slowdown on development.

New York State officials have already attempted to impose some controls on the field. 

In July, Hochul signed an executive order imposing a year-long moratorium on construction of the large data centers that fuel AI's growth. Attorney General Leticia James' office last week issued an "alert" about a whistleblower portal for tech workers with information about dangerous and potentially illegal AI development.

Hochul sought to contrast the state’s regulations with the more laissez-faire approach of President Donald Trump, who has called worst-case scenarios of AI going wrong a "hoax" and warned that excessive regulation would be a boon to China, which is also developing the technology.

Trump's December 2025 executive order, Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence, established federal policy of "minimally burdensome national policy framework for AI."

The order mentioned federal preemption of state AI regulations a dozen times and announced creation of an AI Litigation Task Force to challenge state laws "inconsistent" with state policy. 

Trump's approach, Hochul said Monday, amounts to an "abdication of responsibility of epic proportions."

In an email, an official from the White House wrote that "a patchwork of conflicting state laws would undermine American innovation and our ability to lead in the global AI race. The most restrictive States should not dictate national AI policy at the expense of America’s domination of this new frontier."

Hochul's office did not respond to a request for comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

By Nicholas Spangler

nicholas.spangler@newsday.comspanglernewsday

Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.